The present invention relates generally to an optical head applicable to different types of magneto-optical disks, and a magneto-optical disk storage having such an optical head.
The conventional magneto-optical disk storage has an optical head corresponding to each type of magneto-optical disk. That is, different optical heads are used for respective p-polarized and s-polarized light types of magneto-optical disks. If the optical head does not correspond to the type of the magneto-optical disk, a desired reproducing operation cannot be performed due to the low output level of a tracking error signal. Hereupon, a laser beam of the optical head corresponding to the p-polarized light type of magneto-optical disk transmits parallel to the grooves thereon. On the other hand, a laser beam of the optical head corresponding to the s-polarized light type of magneto-optical disk transmits vertical to the grooves thereon.
However, it is troublesome to prepare a different optical head for each type of magneto-optical disk.